Attention Crash

This is your motivational post for the day.

Corporate recruiters came to Middlebury, but I didn’t put on a suit and show up and brown-nose. No one I knew did. Life wasn’t about achievement, but experiences. John worked in an auto plant, saving money for a year in Europe. Steve and I went west to Little Cottonwood Canyon to be ski bums. We were going nowhere fast. And the only people who had a problem with that were our parents, who’d made all kinds of compromises so we could live our dreams, but were frustrated we had no safety net.

Everybody wants a safety net today. Everybody’s going somewhere. If not getting an MBA, developing an iPhone App. As if everybody could be rich.

But that what the media’s selling us. Success. Defined as beauty, riches and fame. You’d think that Perez Hilton was the American cheerleader, pulling down everybody else so he can ascend to his rightful place atop the popularity pecking order. Buff off all your rough edges so you can make it, so you can live fabulously.

What a bunch of crap.

There’s not much I can add to that.

[This is what happens when a set goes terribly wrong. I started writing this as a funny "what would happen if you got caught masturbating at work?" and somewhere it got very angry and off track. It probably should go without saying that there's no way I'd do this on stage.

I present it here because, well, I think it's important to be open about the process of writing as well as the finished product. I know it helps me to see 'behind the scenes' of my favorite writers and comics. That everything they do isn't gold. So maybe this will help some of you.]

The only thing that’s worse than getting fired from a job is not getting fired.

That isn’t to say that getting fired doesn’t suck. It does. And unless you go out with middle fingers raised to the sky, giving that final speech where you tell everyone exactly what you think of them – the speech we all rehearse every morning on the drive in. The one where you finally get to tell Betty down in HR just what you think of her cubical full of cat pictures and her fucking email memos about copier etiquette – getting fired is the ultimate walk of shame.

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I know the whole “how to find your passion” thing is a hot and heavy topic of discussion out there, especially in some circles. My advice has always been “go try and bunch of shit and something will stick” but I know there’s a lot of you who want more. More advice, more posts, more things to tag in del.icio.us.

If you’re in the “more” camp, Ben Rosenfeld of Big Ben Comedy has 25 pages of goodness for what ails you. He took the very brave step of dropping out of Cal-Tech in order to pursue comedy and if the internet is your source for Very Important Life Advice he’s probably a good person to listen to. And a lot braver than you.

*it’s been pointed out that this post sounds angry. That’s because I don’t feel well and I’m dragging myself out to perform anyway. My anger is at god and myself. The ebook is worth reading.

Here’s the set I’m working on for this week. I hope you enjoy. As always comments are appreciated.

I got fired last week.

Over the past 14 years or so, I’ve held some cool jobs. I’ve been a network engineer. I was the creative director of a media company. The job I got fired from was barista at a coffee bar. Which hurts, because at 32 I shouldn’t even really be working in a coffee shop. And that’s the job I failed at.

I got fired because a homeless man shit himself while standing in the middle of said coffee shop, which I guess in Pennsylvania is grounds for immediate termination.

This is what happened. We had this policy where if you bring in your own cup and you didn’t have the $1.29 for a small coffee, as long as you threw us something, fifty cents or sixty cents, we weren’t going to fuck with you. You could just have the coffee.

And we had a few homeless guys who would snag cups out of the garbage and we’d rinse the cups out for them and everyone was happy.

But if you try and do something nice for people, someone will fuck it up.

This morning a guy comes in. White, late thirties, twitchy in that crackhead way and he’s just gripping the shit out of a fistful of pennies. Immediately he starts arguing with me over the cost of a small coffee. Since I can see that he’s not holding a hundred and twenty nine pennies in his hand, I tell him that if he just goes and gets a cup, I’ll give him the coffee. I don’t want his disgusting change.

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I was interviewed for the Good Men Project.

7.) Who is the best dad you know, and how does he earn that distinction?

My parents went through a rough divorce when I was 6, and my mom and I moved across the country. A lot of fathers would have used that as an excuse to go out and start a new life.

My dad made sure that he remained a big part of my life. He has always been there for me, and he’s always worked to make sure that we have a very close relationship. The sort of unconditional love he’s always shown earns him the distinction of world’s best dad, by far.

So if you’ve ever wanted to see the more vulnerable side of Corman, hit that link for your chance.